Crowdsourcing intelligent design

Design intelligence, namely, artificial intelligence to solve creative problems and produce creative ideas, has improved rapidly with the new generation artificial intelligence. However, existing methods are more skillful in learning from data and have limitations in creating original ideas different from the training data. Crowdsourcing offers a promising method to produce creative designs by combining human inspiration and machines’ computational ability. We propose a crowdsourcing intelligent design method called ‘flexible crowdsourcing design’. Design ideas produced through crowdsourcing design can be unreliable and inconsistent because they rely solely on selection among participants’ submissions of ideas. In contrast, the flexible crowdsourcing design method employs a cultivation procedure that integrates the ideas from crowd participants and cultivates these ideas to improve design quality at the same time. We introduce a series of studies to show how flexible crowdsourcing design can produce original design ideas consistently. Specifically, we will describe the typical procedure of flexible crowdsourcing design, the refined crowdsourcing tasks, the factors that affect the idea development process, the method for calculating idea development potential, and two applications of the flexible crowdsourcing design method. Finally, it summarizes the design capabilities enabled by crowdsourcing intelligent design. This method enhances the performance of crowdsourcing design and supports the development of design intelligence.     

黑龙江省“互联网+政务服务”平台创新建设构想

“互联网+政务服务”是一个涵盖业务支撑体、基础平台体系、关键保障技术体系、评价考核体系的复杂系统工程,是关系到简政放权、放管结合、优化服务能否落到实处的关键所在。“互联网+政务服务”平台是通过科学的顶层设计,在国家标准的框架内,融入“互联网+”的实践成果,进行创新设计、建设和运营。使平台既有横向部门之间、纵向层级之间的体制机制创新,也有从行政审批服务扩展到公共便民服务的应用创新。     

Enhancing design thinking in instructional technology students

There is growing demand in our society to cultivate creativity and foster innovation. Design thinking has been successfully practiced as an educational framework for supporting innovation in educational and work contexts. However, research on design thinking education that facilitates the acquisition of knowledge related to design process and practices is extremely limited, particularly in educational contexts. This pre-/posttest mixed methods study examined blogging as an instructional approach for supporting design thinking education in an online instructional technology course. An analysis of quantitative and qualitative data revealed an improvement in students’ design thinking skills after participating in the course. Students were more comfortable using design practices and processes than their creative abilities. Blogging about design thinking opened the potential for active knowledge construction about design thinking and reflection about personal design practices. However, it also hindered participation of students who were less comfortable with narrative meaning-making afforded through blogging or sharing their ideas on open networks such as blogs.     

Affective judgment in creative design: A method of fitness evaluation to the problem/solution spaces

A method of fitness evaluation to the problem/solution spaces is proposed based on the affective judgment in creative design. Six experienced designers and one-hundred-one users participated in a set of exploratory experiments on affective judgement of automobile design. From the experimental data, we identify the differences in designer's affective appeal in a design and user's affective response to the design. From data analysis, we confirm the general validity of that the ‘creative’ aspect of design can be described by introducing the notions of ‘default’ and ‘surprise’ problem/solution spaces. The affective judgments based on the expectations of designers and users are shown to be an effective alternative to quantitative metrics in design evaluation and concept selection. The presented findings suggested that the success and creativity are not the same, the goal of design practice is to find solutions that are both creative and successful.     

An impactful crowdsourcing intermediary design - a case of a service imagery crowdsourcing system

Crowdsourcing is usually implemented using an intermediary organization or directly coordinated by solution seekers. For those using an IT-based crowdsourcing intermediary, the important factors of intermediaries that impact the crowdsourcing outcome are yet unclear. In addition, little research was conducted on how to design a crowdsourcing intermediary that can address the combined challenges of considering different cognitive demand levels of solution providers’ contributions, combining contributions and evaluating contributions. This paper identifies three important factors and provides a novel design of crowdsourcing intermediary to cope with these challenges. This study uses a case that focuses on how to assist small and medium businesses (SMBs) to develop their service imageries in triggering service innovation and designing their service experiences as to fulfill the desired outcomes of customers. Through the case, the benefits of our crowdsourcing intermediary design are demonstrated and justified. The three important factors are the crowdsourcing intermediary knowledge base, generative networks and empowerment of crowd members. This study shows that the crowdsourcing process can facilitate achieving a higher chance of attaining creative solutions for SMBs’ innovation problems when the three factors are well incorporated and managed within the crowdsourcing intermediary design. This study also presents a novel design of crowdsourcing intermediary that can address the combined challenges of coping with different cognitive demand levels of crowd members and combining and evaluating crowd members’ contributions, in order to attain impactful crowdsourcing outcome.     

‘Orchestrating’ sustainable crowdsourcing: A characterisation of solver brokerages

Exemplars of open innovation have revealed that intellectual property (IP) need not only be sourced through existing hierarchical or market relationships. Rather IP can be acquired from individuals and firms with whom an organization has no prior relationship. In such cases, an intermediary, operating as an innovation exchange or brokerage, frequently facilitates the development and acquisition of IP. This paper examines one type of innovation intermediary, the ‘Solver Brokerage,’ which enables innovation exchanges between organizations and unknown external firms and individuals (i.e. a crowdsourcing process). While the commercial success of Solver Brokerages indicates the potency of arguments concerning the potential of crowdsourcing, little is known about the operation of such brokerages or the crowdsourcing processes that they enable. This paper examines extant research on innovation networks, crowdsourcing, and electronic marketplaces to identify three processes (knowledge mobility, appropriability and stability) that we argue are necessary to ‘orchestrate’ crowdsourcing. Using a field study of four Solver Brokerages, an innovation seeking organization, as well as 15 innovation providers (i.e. members of the ‘crowd’), the paper illustrates the ways in which the three orchestration processes are enhanced in Solver Brokerages. It reveals that while knowledge mobility and appropriability processes can be enhanced by activities under the control of the Solver Brokerage, stability is largely determined by innovation seeking organizations and the innovation providers. The paper concludes that broker-provided value-added ‘orchestration’ services need to enable knowledge mobility and appropriability, and to ensure that ‘unsuccessful’ innovation seekers and providers appropriate sufficient value to participate again.     

MediaSpace 7 (part 2)

This article describes a simple and easy to use framework for web jamming using the OpenSound Control (OSC) protocol (2002) and SuperCollider (2002) by James McCartney. The word ‘web jamming’ refers to playing music together over the Internet. This kind of musical collaboration over networks has been around for a while and has already been implemented in a number of applications. Even though much of the recent development in this field is very impressive and provides the players with all sorts of customisation for sound and graphics, I still feel some very important things are lacking. Most of all I would like to see personality reflected throughout the system, and by providing a framework suitable for connecting musicians together rather than a fixed set of musical instruments for them to use, I think this can be achieved. So, by handing over the complete design of the virtual instruments, what parameters to control, how they will sound, what they will look like etc., to the players themselves, I wish to open up web jamming for individual and creative use to all kinds of musicians. If the players can express their ‘sound’ more freely, this can compensate somewhat for delayed reactions, lack of eye contact, gestures and atmospheres lost due to physical displacement and technological limitations.     

Four kinds of design thinking: From ideating to making,engaging, and criticizing

Design thinking is spreading extremely rapidly among organizations in terms of interest and practices. Far from being linked to the “form” of products, design thinking is accepted as a formal creative problem‐solving method with the intent to foster innovation. However, the spread of design thinking in practice has not been coupled with a similarly rapid and robust diffusion of its theoretical underpinnings. This paper aims to clarify the theoretical contribution of design thinking by identifying the practices that connote different interpretations of the paradigm. Moreover, we investigate the innovation challenges that the adoption of the design thinking paradigm aims to address. From an empirical perspective, through 47 case studies of consulting organizations that provide advisory services based on the design thinking paradigm in Italy, we identify four different interpretations of the paradigm characterized by different practices: creative problem solving, sprint execution, creative confidence, and innovation of meaning.     

Product design,semantics and emotional response

This paper explores theoretical issues in ergonomics related to semantics and the emotional content of design. The aim is to find answers to the following questions: how to design products triggering ‘happiness’ in one's mind; which product attributes help in the communication of positive emotions; and finally, how to evoke such emotions through a product. In other words, this is an investigation of the ‘meaning’ that could be designed into a product in order to ‘communicate’ with the user at an emotional level. A literature survey of recent design trends, based on selected examples of product designs and semantic applications to design, including the results of recent design awards, was carried out in order to determine the common attributes of their design language. A review of Good Design Award winning products that are said to convey and/or evoke emotions in the users has been done in order to define good design criteria. These criteria have been discussed in relation to user emotional responses and a selection of these has been given as examples.     

基于复杂适应性系统的众包翻译平台的模型与仿真

众包系统是一个复杂适应性系统,这一性质是提出新的众包平台研究方法的重要基础.众包是社会计算中一门新兴的研究领域,基于网络是众包的主要特征,互不相识的人们通过互联网进行合作创新和利润分成.不同的众包平台采用了不同的机制设计,良好的机制设计是众包平台稳定发展的基础.基于复杂适应系统,为研究众包平台提供了新的思路.以众包翻译平台为例,使用复杂适应性系统中的"主体"来模拟众包中各个角色,初步构建了众包平台中的主体模型,定义了主体的状态转换以及主体间行为和交互规则,最后,建立了一个简单的仿真框架,通过对多主体合作博弈过程的动态模拟来演示一个众包平台的发展过程,从而验证各种众包机制的合理性,为众包系统的平台设计、机制设计提供可靠和可信的依据,为研究众包平台提供了方便的模拟环境.     

How Award‐Winning SMEs Manage the Barriers to Innovation

Much attention has been focused on increasing the so‐called ‘innovation quotient’ of national manufacturing economies. In particular, there has been widespread interest in revealing and examining those barriers that impede innovation, the suggestion being that the removal of such barriers constitutes a prerequisite for successful innovation. This study reports on the experiences of eight firms who had received a UK Design Council ‘millennium product’ award for ‘groundbreaking’ innovation. The implication of the award is that these firms should have overcome any barriers they faced and therefore act as exemplars of how to manage innovative new product development. However, the research shows that the firms were as likely to ignore barriers as they were to address them. Living with a barrier as an alternative to overcoming it is clearly an acceptable strategy for a number of these award winners. The study reports on how the firms managed the various barriers that they encountered.     

可演进的新一代互联网体系结构研究进展

当前互联网正处于向新一代互联网过渡发展的阶段.对于新一代互联网体系结构的发展方向,支持革命式路线的研究人员认为应该重新设计,但他们提出的方案难以在目前的互联网实际部署;支持改良式路线的研究人员认为应该在现有互联网的基础上进行修改,但某些修改在一定程度上破坏了互联网的设计原则,影响了新应用的部署.互联网发展历史表明,当前互联网的核心机制和设计原则仍然具有旺盛的生命力,可以适用于新一代互联网,而需要修改的则是部分基本要素(例如IPv4协议向IPv6协议的发展).综合这些方面的考虑,我们认为新一代互联网体系结构的发展应当采用一个称为演进的中间路线:保持互联网的核心和设计原则相对稳定,谨慎地改变约束其扩展的基本要素,以适应和更好地支持未来的应用需求.文中首先分析了互联网体系结构的发展趋势,提出了可演进性的定义,阐述了可演进体系结构的设计原则和设计约束.可演进性的关键是如何确定重要的核心和设计原则,如何划分核心原则和基本要素之间的界限,如何分析研究者们提出的互联网体系结构或者某种协议机制是否符合可演进性.针对这些问题,文中提出了互联网体系结构可演进性评估模型的若干思路.在此基础上,进一步提出了基于IP的可演进网络体系结构实验网络的设计思路,以期为研究人员提供实验和验证体系结构设计的可用平台.该实验平台与现有实验平台的主要区别是强调了进行实验的体系结构和协议机制应当符合可演进性设计原则,使得这些体系结构和协议机制在当前互联网中有可能得到实际部署.     

Product interface design: A participatory approach based on virtual reality

The usability of the user interface is a key aspect for the success of several industrial products. This assumption has led to the introduction of numerous design methodologies addressed to evaluate the user-friendliness of industrial products. Most of these methodologies follow the participatory design approach to involve the user in the design process. Virtual Reality is a valid tool to support Participatory Design, because it facilitates the collaboration among designers and users.The present study aims to evaluate the feasibility and the efficacy of an innovative Participatory Design approach where Virtual Reality plays a ‘double role’: a tool to evaluate the usability of the virtual product interface, and a communication channel that allows users to be directly involved in the design process as co-designers.In order to achieve these goals, we conducted three experiments: the purpose of the first experiment is to determine the influence of the virtual interface on the usability evaluation by comparing “user–real product” interaction and “user–virtual product” interaction. Subsequently, we tested the effectiveness of our approach with two experiments involving users (directly or through their participation in a focus group) in the redesign of a product user interface. The experiments were conducted with two typologies of consumer appliances: a microwave oven and a washing machine.     

Automation and optimisation of Family Mould Cavity and Runner Layout Design (FMCRLD) using genetic algorithms and mould layout design grammars

Family Mould Cavity Runner Layout Design (FMCRLD) is the most demanding and critical task in the early Conceptual Mould Layout Design (CMLD) phase. Traditional experience-dependent manual FCMRLD workflow causes long design lead time, non-optimum designs and human errors. However, no previous research can support FMCRLD automation and optimisation. The nature of FMCRLD is non-repetitive and generative. The complexity of FMCRLD optimisation involves solving a complex two-level combinatorial layout design optimisation problem. Inspired by the theory of evolutionary design in nature “Survival of the Fittest” and the biological genotype–phenotype mapping process of the generation of form in living systems, this research first proposes an innovative evolutionary FMCRLD approach using Genetic Algorithms (GA) and Mould Layout Design Grammars (MLDG) that can automate and optimise such generative and complex FMCRLD with its explorative and generative design process embodied in a stochastic evolutionary search. Based on this approach, an Intelligent Conceptual Mould Layout Design System (ICMLDS) prototype has been developed. The ICMLDS is a powerful intelligent design system as well as an interactive design-training system that can encourage and accelerate mould designers’ design alternative exploration, exploitation and optimisation for better design in less time. This research innovates the traditional manual FMCRLD workflow to eliminate costly human errors and boost the less-experienced mould designer’s ability and productivity in performing FCMRLD during the CMLD phase.     

Designing for creativity: Considerations for DSS development

Decision support systems (DSS) can be designed to support the creative and intuitive aspects of decision making. Our purpose is to provide a new perspective for the design of DSS by focusing on the important external factors that have been shown to influence creative activity. Design guidelines can then be developed by viewing a DSS as a special environment that incorporates these factors.     

Strategic effort allocation in online innovation tournaments

Online innovation tournaments, such as those hosted by crowdsourcing platforms (e.g., Kaggle), have been widely adopted by firms to evolve creative solutions to various problems. Solvers compete in these tournaments to earn rewards. In such competitive environments, it is imperative that solvers provide creative solutions with minimum effort. This article explores the factors that influence the solvers’ effort allocation decisions in a dynamic tournament setting. Specifically, comprehensive time variant data of teams that participated in crowdsourcing competitions on Kaggle were analyzed to gain insight into how solvers continually formulate strategies in light of performance feedback obtained through interim ranking. The results suggest that solvers strategically allocate their efforts throughout the contest to dynamically optimize their payoffs through balancing the probability of winning and the cost of expending effort. In particular, solvers tend to increase their efforts toward the end of tournaments or when they get closer to winning positions. Furthermore, our findings indicate that a last-minute surge in effort is more prevalent among high-skill solvers than in those with lower skill levels. In addition to providing insights that may help solvers develop strategies to improve their performance, the study has implications for the design of online crowdsourcing platforms, particularly in terms of incentivizing solvers to put forth their best effort.     

Knowledge representation and inference techniques to improve the management of gas and oil facilities

This paper describes an experimental work carried out in the framework of an important European project to create and make use of a wide-ranging knowledge base in the gas/oil domain. In the context of this work, “knowledge base” means a collection of formal statement relating, with a negligible loss of information, the inner content (the ‘meaning’) of “complex events” included in two different “storyboards”. These events – originally presented under the form of unstructured natural language information – concern some general activities proper to the management of gas/oil facilities, like recognizing and monitoring gas leakage alarms in a gas processing plant or triggering the different steps needed to activate a gas turbine. To express this sort of information and to set up the knowledge base, the NKRL (Narrative Knowledge Representation Language) formalism has been used. NKRL is a conceptual meta-model and Computer Science environment expressly created to deal, in an ‘intelligent’ and complete way, with complex and content-rich ‘narrative’ data sources. The final knowledge base has been firstly tested in depth using the standard NKRL querying and information retrieval tools. High-level inference procedures have then been used, both “transformation rules” – unsuccessful queries are ‘transformed’ to produce results that are ‘semantically similar’ to those searched for initially – and “hypothesis rules” – information in the knowledge base is automatically aggregated to supply a sort of ‘causal’ explanation of some retrieved events.     

Communication and Context: Collective Tacit Knowledge and Practice in Japan’s Workplace ba

In contrast to Schumpeter’s “perennial gale of creative destruction” (Schumpeter 1976: 84), government–coordinated economic development in post–1945 Japan has owed more to informal (but binding) “rules of the game” (North 1990) that situate working, learning and innovation within the spaces delineated by tightly bounded company–as–family workplace organisations or ‘ba’ (which roughly means ‘place’ or ‘interaction field’). Horizontal keiretsu groupings, together with fixed trading–patterns in supply and distribution chains, continue to support an interlocking ‘steady state’ economic structure in which new technologies tend to emerge from existing organisations. Shared experience within workplace ba generates tacit knowledge that is held in common by colleagues and retained as a potent tool for shaping future practice. It plays a vital role in facilitating ‘friction free’ communication amongst insiders, who can act as a group to ostracise and retaliate against agents who break their code. Long–term obligations link salaried male employees to their workplace ba. Consequently, autonomous boundary–spanning communities of practice, together with industry–university collaboration and other transient associations with outsiders, lack legitimacy. Cook and Brown’s (1999) pluralist epistemology is used to compare Western interpretations of Mode 1 and Mode 2 knowledge (Gibbons et al 1994) with the privileged role that Japan’s workplace ba accord to insider collective–tacit knowledge, which we tentatively call ‘Mode 3’ knowledge.     

Towards the development of interoperable sensing systems for the future enterprise

Current research efforts in the area of enterprise systems are focusing on the development and standardization of new technologies to sustain the “Future Internet based Enterprise”. In this context, emerging Internet technologies are integrated into enterprise information systems in order to provide sustainable business benefits. These new systems have been included in a broad concept of “Future Internet Based Enterprise Systems”. The present paper proposes a sensing based approach to the design of Future Internet Based Enterprise Systems. To sustain the seamless integration and system interoperability a framework to integrate the sensing ability with enterprise information systems is discussed.